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24 May 2016

Frederikke Vilhelmine Møller, the daughter of a metal worker was raised in
Copenhagen. Her father died in 1856, and she was raised by her grandparents. At
age 20, working as a maid, Vilhelmine was jailed for stealing food for her
impoverished mother and four small siblings.

In 1881 Vilhelmine Møller was appointed head of the Kana boys’ home. She was
respected for her modern opinions on child rearing, and she was published in
many magazines. In 1889 at the first public meeting of Kvindevalgretsforeningen
– KVF (the Female Suffrage Association) 1500 women voted Møller onto the board.

On 28 February 1893 16-year-old Volmer Sjøgren (born 1878), one of Møller’s
wards, died in bed after a birthday party. He was about to leave the home and
take up an apprenticeship as a metal worker in Copenhagen. The doctor listed the
cause of death as a blood clot and Volmer was buried.

However his roommate, Louis, told his mother that Matron Møller often called
Volmer to share her bed. The mother contacted the chairman of the Kana board.
The chairman dismissed the insinuation as ludicrous, but when he told Møller of
the claim, she lost composure, collapsed and was admitted to hospital. After
discharge she was interviewed by the police, who found her explanations
inconsistent. She confessed to a five-year affair with Volmer, but denied
killing him. The police exhumed his body but found no evidence of foul play.

At Easter Vilhelm attended religious services in prison, and then confessed
that she had killed Volmer by adding a sedative to his fruit juice and then
suffocated him in his bed, fearing that after leaving the home, he would
disclose their relationship. The district judge wondered about Møller’s large
and stocky figure and her deep voice, and finally asked her directly if she were
a man. This she adamantly denied.

She was then examined by professor Stadfeldt who decided that Møller was not
a woman, not a hermaphrodite, but a man. Møller was put into men’s clothing and
transferred to the men’s prison at Christianshavn. Here he
wrote an autobiography, in which he describes himself as Dobbeltmennesket
(a double person). Further examination established genital ‘abnomalities’.
It came out that Møller had also had sexual relations with an assistant, a young
widow called Mackwitz. Such was Møller’s reputation as devout and respectable
that Mackwitz was suspected of corrupting her boss. She was arrested, but
released after two months.

Møller’s defense was based on the personal suffering and social circumstances
of living in a false gender role. Møller’s mother testified that as her baby’s
penis was so small, she thought that she had a daughter. However on 4 March
1894, under the male name of Vilhelmi Møller, he was condemned to death. The
Supreme Court upheld this verdict 22 June. On 21 July Møller’s sentence was
commuted by King Christian IX to hard labour for life. The next year, a Dr
Stilhoff analysed the documents and published an account in a medical journal.

After eleven years, Vilhelmi Møller was released from Vridsløselille
prison. In December 1905, Møller married Agnes Larsen (1858 - 1925) who had been
a warder in the women’s prison where Møller had first been held, and had kept in
touch by correspondence. He found work in the office of the lawyer who had
defended him.

In 1907 Vilhelmi Møller changed his legal name to Frederik Vilhelm Schmidt.

Karin Lützen. “La Mise en discours and Silences on the History of Sexuality”
in Richard G. Parker & John H Gagnon. Conceiving Sexuality: Approaches to
Sex Research in a Postmodern World. Routledge, 1994:38-9.

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About Zagria

I have a social science degree. I spent several years in the 70s doing Gay Lib counselling, and moved on to organizing trans groups. I was rejected by the Clarke Institute (now CAMH) in the mid 1980s, probably because I do not match either of their stereotypes, but was accepted by Russel Reid on our first meeting in late 1987, and had surgery from James Dalrymple some months later. I have mainly worked as an IT consultant. I have been with the same husband for 45 years.